the tendency for people to perform better on tasks in the presence of others than when alone.

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audience effect

impact on the individual task performance of the presence of an audience.

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social inhibition

the tendency for people to perform less well in the presence of others than when alone.

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dominant response

the response which is most likely to be given in a situation, that is most usual, appropriate or best practiced. It takes priority over all other possible responses.

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Yerkes-Dodson Law

when arousal is very high or low then performance is poor. Performance is best at moderate (optimal) levels of arousal.

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conformity

a form of social influence where group pressure, real or imagined, results in a change of behaviour.

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group

two or more people who share a common goal.

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membership group

a group to which we belong; a group we are in.

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reference group

a group that is psychologically significant (important) for our behaviour and attitudes.

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Autokinetic effect

visual illusion in which a pinpoint of light shinning in complete darkness appears to move about.

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normative social influence

an explanation of conformity which is a result of people's need to be seen as part of the group and not going against the norms of the group. The individual wants to be liked and respected by the group.

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informational social influence

an explanation if conformity which is a result of people's need to be right. The individual turns to others in situations of uncertainty and conforms because others are thought to have more knowledge.

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compliance

a type of conformity: conforming to the majority but not really agreeing with them; public agreement but private disagreement.

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obedience to authority

a type of social influence where someone acts in response to a direct order from authority.

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agentic state

lacking a sense of personal responsibility and feeling under the control of an authority figure.

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autonomous state

taking control of one's own behaviour; feeling responsible for and aware of the consequences of the behaviour.

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external validity

whether the findings of a study can be generalised to situations and people other than those in the study, for example other populations, locations or times.

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ecological validity

a specific type of external validity referring to generalisations beyond the immediate setting to the real world.

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internal validity

whether observed effects (measures of dependent variables) are due to the manipulation of the IV.

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individualistic culture

where people prioritise standing out as an individual over fitting in as a group member, for example UK, USA.

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collectivist culture

where people prioritise group loyalty, belonging and fitting into a group over standing out as an individual, for example India, Brazil.

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presumptive consent

obtaining the views of other people about the acceptability of experimental procedures. If others feel that they are acceptable, then we can presume that the actual participants would have also consented.

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modality

refers to the sense, for example sight, touch, smell.

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rehearsed

repeated, and this is a key control process which acts as a buffer between SR and LTM, and also enables information to be transferred to LTM.

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functional separation

the two stores are used for different tasks (or functions) - STM for rehearsal, LTM for storage.

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displaced

pushed out of STM due to its limited capacity of only five to nine items.

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consolidated

the time that it takes for information that has left STM to be reprocessed for storage in LTM, during this process information can be lost.

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anterograde

a type of memory failure for information after an event, for example surgery.

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empirical

in this sense, scientific studies can be carried out, for exams experiments.

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visuo-spatial scratchpad

allows the temporary storage and manipulation of visual and spatial information. It is limited in capacity, typically holds about three to four items, and is known as the 'inner eye'.

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central executive

a limited capacity attentional system that has a controlling force over the sub-systems (phonological loop and visuo-spatial scratchpad).

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episodic buffer

a limited capacity store that binds together information from a number of fields - verbal, visual, spatial and chronological information. It can use access to the different sub-systems, and from conscious awareness.

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functional imaging

when a scan of the brain is carried out whilst tasks are being performed.

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Wernicke's area

a region in the temporal region of the brain (usually left hemisphere) that is important to language.

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Broca's area

a region in the frontal lobe (usually left hemisphere) that is important it speech production.

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procedural memory

the skills and habits that people possess, for example how to swim, ride a bike, play the piano.

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semantic memory

our general knowledge about the world and all the facts we know. There is no specific link of time and place if learning the information.

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episodic memory

memories of specific episodes in a person's life. It includes all the personal and autobiographic information of a life and is affected by time, context, organisation and place of occurrence.

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hippocampus

part of the limbic system, which is deep inside the brain.

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cerebellum

situated at the back of the brain behind the brain stem and stores the skills we have learnt.

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trace

the change in neural tissue (in the brain) as a result of a stimulus.

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cue

anything that acts as an aid to retrieval from memory.

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engram

a permanent change in neural tissue (in the brain) as a result of a stimulus.

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distractor task

any task that interferes with rehearsal in STM, for example counting backwards in threes from 300.

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consolidation

where time is needed for learning to become firmly recorded.

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environmental cue

something in the surroundings that helps you to remember.

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repressed

pushed below conscious awareness.

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pervasive developmental disorder

a severe impairment in several areas of development which starts early in childhood and becomes apparent as the child begins to develop.

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mental retardation

a disorder which is evident before age 18 and includes a number of deficits including low intelligence.

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savant

a person with an extraordinary ability in a particular field, for example someone how can calculate the day of the week on which any future date will fall.

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islets of ability

although children with autism are often poorer that their developmental equivalents on many tasks, on a particular task, such as rote learning names, they might have a superior talent.

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joint attention

where both infant and another person are attentive to the same object and to each other.

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syndrome

a set of symptoms that occur together and may have common origin.

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autonomy

in this context, means the sense that you can have an effect on the environment.

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post-mortem

an investigation (for example, of the brain) carried out after the death of an individual.

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concordance

'agreement between'; the extent to which a pair of twins share similar traits or characteristics.

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autistic spectrum

where there are different levels of impairment, not all people display the same symptoms with the same intensity.

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Dyskinesia

involuntary, repetitive bodily movement.

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Adaptive

behaviour that allows the child to fit into the environment, for example social interaction.